How to use PHOTO MECHANIC to speed up your PHOTOGRAPHY WORKFLOW
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- čas přidán 16. 02. 2018
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► Today I'm going to show you how I use Photo Mechanic to speed up your Photography Workflow. And I've teamed up with the guys from Photo Mechanic to give away one license of this amazing program to a lucky one of you! (THE GIVEAWAY IS NOW OVER)
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Photo Mechanic is a fast media browser that helps you view, organise, manage and export your digital photos and videos.
The minute you put down the camera, your post-processing workflow begins. The most productive photographers in the world use Photo Mechanic and it features to make managing photos faster and easier. It allows you to quickly ingest/import photos from your memory cards and pick your favourites without having to wait.
It’s part of every single one of my photography workflows and I honestly couldn’t imagine it without it! - Jak na to + styl
Want to get Photo Mechanic for free?
SIGN UP for the GIVEAWAY here: bit.ly/CEW-PhotoMechanicWorkflow
I've tried Photomechanics before and couldn't see any huge advantages over LR until I saw the video. Now I can see the difference quite clearly. Thank you very much.
My pleasure Benedikt. Glad you got something out of my video.
Very useful for a person who just downloaded the 30 day trial of Photo Mechanic. I do lots of events with 300-400 photos and I expect this will be a big timesaver in the culling and importing process with Lightroom CC. Thanks!
Chris, Awesome video. I was one of the photographers left abandoned by Aperture years ago, I purchased Lightroom and once I moved my Aperture Library into LR it became a nightmare. Now LR5 it is a discontinued product by Adobe and to make matters worse Sony A7 III is not supported by my "OLD" software. I am glad I came across your channel and life is going back to normal, more time out in the field and not trying to sort out my library. I spend at least 6 months of the year in Asia and Africa so a cloud based software does not work for me since internet access is a luxury in many places; My son is a videographer and he is making a living out his camera and I can't wait to introduce him to your channel.
They way you present the information makes a complex process very logical by presenting it in a clear, methodical and simple manner. GREAT JOB
Thanks Juan! Great to hear the positive feedback from you. I hope you manage to sort out your LR catalog soon ;-)
Currently using Linux and use a nearly identical workflow with Geeqie for culling and darktable for editing. Moving back to windows for my new PC build (for a few reasons unfortunately) and am glad I’ll be able to get as quick sorting. Thanks so much for showing this, so useful to know I can use Photo Mechanic and retain my workflow.
I was looking for info on how to use Photo Mechanic and ran across your video on a Google search. Great info, exactly what I was looking for.
Great! Good to hear that you found it useful.
Another benefit of using PM to do an initial cull is that your LR catalog is LOTS smaller and that can help LR run faster.
This is still so very helpful. I just installed Photo Mechanic because of this!
Welcome to the family. I’m still using it for every photo job. Never failed me.
Great video, Chris. Thanks for the quick walkthrough.
Thanks a lot! You have given so clear guidance to start my first Photo Mechanic workflow!
Merci Chris. Nicely done 👍
Amazing - thank you - I'm signing up for the trial today and this video was so helpful!!
Hi there.Thanks for doing this video. I am trying Photo Mechanic for the first time. I'm trying to follow along but where you have a field for Folder Name with all your variables, there is nowhere beside Folder Name to click on. There is no field.
great!
Brilliant! Thanks
This could just be the tool I have been looking for, thanks for great video.
Give it a shot! I bet you won't want to stop using it after the 30-day trial.
Thanks! Awesome setup detail.
Amazing video! THXS a lot!!! Just bought it!
You’ll never look back. Photo Mechanic is the best thing since sliced bread.
hey man thank you so much for your video!! the bit about variables has helped loads and really wanted to say thank you!!
Great! Glad you found it useful ;-)
Hi Chris, thank you so much for all of those tips you're sharing with us, this is just gold mine! I'm looking into reorganizing my pictures and keeping it as organized as yours. There are just a couple things I'm trying to understand: You're importing your media straight from your SD card to your computer internal HD right? do your selections and then import the selected ones in Lightroom. And then you copy the RAW files onto your external HD? Or that process happens when ingesting through PhotoMechanics in the "primary destination" panel? I've been using Lightroom to organize my pics so far, but just got PhotoMechanics. So if I wanted to reorganize all my pics and get as organize as you, I should probably import all my pics from my external HD to PhotoMechanics and create a new Lightroom catalog? Thank you so much for your help and again, for sharing your precious knowledge! cheers!
Thanks Ghislain! Definitely check out my blog post too. I think you’ll find the answers to your questions in there. It’s linked in the video description.
Awesome, def going to try this! thanks mate
Thanks for the tour I will try it
Pleasure! I'm sure you'll enjoy Photo Mechanic! Definitely worth the 30-day trial.
Important info a newbie to Photo Mechanic - thanks for the info
Great to hear that you found it useful!
Thanks for this. It was really informative!
Pleasure :-) Hope you find some use in it and/or even give Photo Mechanic a go.
Love your videos, very cool to see how your workflow too
Thanks Aaron! Great that you found it interesting ;-)
Can I upload raw photos from Camera's sd card or external Drive? is it okay first save raw photos in external drive and then ingest or upload to photo mechanic ? I ingest raw photo from sd card without saving in external drive and format sd card later and loss all photos? can't get back again. Can you share me how to do and I really frustration can't get back my photos.
Thanks for a great video, and especially explanation of the variables! It makes lots of sense, and i completely get it - when i have only one shoot on my card. Now im in the situation that i actually have 3 different shoots on my card.. How do i separate them, or like ingest them in different "rounds", so i can give them the right location and info?? Hope it makes sense😁
In the latest version of Photo Mechanic you can ‘ingest from selection’ 😉
Good workflow inside this software and I thank you for that. However, my two cents, you should never trash any photo from any shoot IMHO. I always copy the folder from the card then convert all the proprietary files to DNG and archive those on an external hard drive once they're properly classified. I don't need to have all my files readily accessible on my computer however I always want to archive everything, because you never know how a client could come back to you, or sometimes you find a gem that you overlooked by browsing through your archives, etc
Then once every file is converted to DNG and archived, I select the keepers, delete the rest from my internal drive, and start editing. This way it's really bulletproof - in fact I have two archive drives, A and B, in case one fail, but I do NOT have a RAID because if you make a mistake on one drive of any RAID it will be replicated on all the other drives.
Anyway a good intro to this software. Seems like the best solution I've seen so far for cataloguing your files :D
Thanks for watching. Sounds like you have a solid workflow that works for you!
Excellent tutorial, thank you.
My pleasure 😉
Great video, thank you
Thanks for this video, it was super helpful.
Great to hear that you found it useful 👍🏼
Great Video, thank you so much. I just have one issue. When I try to link the starts to colours (to Lightroom Classic), in PhotoMechanic, only the starts are showing up, not the colours. Do I need to have Lightroom Classic open for this to work?
Thanks.
To get the colours to work you need the labels to have the same name.
You can change these names inside the preferences in Photo Mechanic. Then Lightroom will recognise that ‘red’ is ‘red’ etc.
cool tutorials, make more like this :)
So helpful, thanks!
Check out the blog post for more details 😉
thank you so much for sharing i will definitely buy this software.
you'll love it!
Hi, I make different folders for different cameras used at a shoot. Photo Mechanic creates different contact sheets for each folder. Is there a way where it can create a contact sheet of a master folder containing files from all the cameras ( subfolders)?
Sure. You can use forward slashes ‘/ ‘ to create folders and sub folders in the location structure when importing.
Hi,is the code replacement fully implemented in the 30days trial version of photo mechanic? I'm struggling with this.Thx
Yes. I believe the trial version is identical to the full version. Check out a video by Dan Carr. He explains the code replacement quite well.
I saw in your video about workflow that you had all your photos as smart preview and lightroom catalogs on a different hard disk.. How do you have the same catalog different places, and if you don't can you then explain me how you do it?
Awesome videos!!
Hi Magnus, I only have the one catalog. And it's on my external SSD. However, it contains the Smart Previews, which means I can have my RAW files on a different drive but still access and even edit them whenever I attach my Lightroom Catalog SSD. Hope that clarifies things for you.
if you viewers have less time increase speed to 1.5x from video setting
amazing video
Do you save raw photo before ingesting in external drive or only in sd cards? otherwise if we format sd card the photo will loss without saving in external drive? is it okay to save raw photo in external drive before ingesting in photo mechanic?
I ingest / copy the RAW files from the SD card to the external drive using Photo Mechanic. Not sure what you mean? Sorry
@@chriseyrewalker how do to copy in external drive with photo Mechanic from sd card???
thanks for a great & V helpful Vid
Hi Chris do you still use this software? I am a wedding photographer and i am looking for a software like this. Got more than 5000 photos dont know where to start. Is PM the right one for selecting the picutures and edit later in LR?
Yep. Photo Mechanic makes working through 5000 photos a breeze.
I just worked through 1500 photos in under an hour.
Thank you!
I used i-view which turned into expression media but it's been dropped. Was always aware of Photo Mechanic but never used it (it's very similar). In Expression Media I used to save my catalogues (contact sheet projects). Can you do this in Photo Mechanic? Thank you.
No. You can’t handle the catalog files in Photo Mechanic. Only image and video files
Cool, thanks. It would be great, if you could make a video on the content how you fill up IPTC Stationery, literally, specially Right of Usage, all that stuff 😘
Check my blog post for screenshots.
Thanks Chris for this super helpful tutorial. One question, not sure if this had been asked, why didn't you select the photos you like from photo mechanic then do an ingest to your hard drive?
Thanks.
That’s also an option, but in general I ingest everything and don’t delete anything, unless it’s blurry or out of focus.
Interesting tool
Great job, I have a problem adding keywords to my video images, they dont appear at all in my PC, how should I proceed to fix this?
Video isn’t work in the same way as photo data. You can’t add ‘XMP’ side car files to video in the same way as to photos. Photo Mechanic will treat the video file like and image and will add the XMP. But it’s not really good for anything.
piece of cake :)
Thank you for putting this together. I've been using this exact method for over a year and it works amazing. However, ever since I upgrade OSX to Catalina, the drag and drop of photos from Photo Mechanic to Lightroom works differently now. I initially import all my files to a USB backup drive, which is backed up via a web based backup service. Once files are culled in Photo Mechanic, I drag the pictures I want to edit into LR. Once imported into Lightroom, instead of having the source on the left hand side of the screen be the Backup drive, it now says 'Macintosh HD' and doesn't carry over the folder structure with the name, date etc. Any input you could provide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Would you suggest importing to the local hard drive over the backup hard drive first and then moving the RAW files later?
Nice video Chris
Thanks Maciej!
Once you are done editing the photos in Lightroom would you just export the final product to a new destination folder? Or would you replace the original photo with the new edited photo in the original location that photo mechanic made? Idk if that made sense haha
I don’t replace the originals. They are raw files. So any edit done is only a setting applied to the XMP. The RAW will always stay untouched.
I usually export the edited ones as JPGs before delivering to clients.
Then I delete the exported files since I don’t need them anymore.
Ciao Chris do you know how many computers we can share/use with one licence? thanks Marco
Not sure. But it says so on the Photo Mechanic website.
Thanks for the video, it is very informative.
I've one question left. Can I synchronize the rating backwards, ie. from Lightroom to Photo Mechanic?
Thanks. And yes. The rating goes both ways
@@chriseyrewalker What about edits in LR (exposure, colour etc), I stopped using PM many years ago because it couldn't see the changes I made in Camera Raw and LR.
Hello! Any updated software about this?. Or you still use the same one?
Thanks!
Same
Thanks for a light speed answer!!👍🏼
Chris, love you work, love the video- but I HAVE TO KNOW: at 0:05 in, did you JUST get back?
Thanks Joey. I’m going to be honest with you... possibly I might have been back for a day already... maybe...
I just downloaded PM6 to test it. But that at 12:22 does not work at all with 0-8 as in your example here. I get PM to Lr only white color.
Go to settings and there’s a tab where you can change the names of the labels. They need to have the same name and spelling as in Lightroom for the colours to work. So 1 has to be ‘Red’
@@chriseyrewalker Thanks man, it's a super strange thing: I am in Principality of Liechtenstein, which have the same local settings like Switzerland. BUT: I am using macOS in UK English and also Lr and PM show up in English, Lr is even intentionally set to English instead of "use system language". For some weird reason, the labels show up in German, Rot, Grün, Gelb, Blau 🙈 - no one except one programmer at Adobe knows why... Can send you a screen shot if you want to. Looks really funny surrounded by all other menu text in English. 😆
I’m pretty sure you can change the label names in Lightroom somewhere. Either way, you can change them in PM. And as long as they are the same as in LR they should sync.
Hi, I am so frustrated, I'm trying to open selected images into Photoshop cc. It doesn't work, I have to do select edit photo individually every time it never opens the whole group. Any idea why i can't open multiple images into Photoshop? I have selected:selected, tagged, still doesn't open more that one at at time.
Just select the ones you want to open in Photoshop, then drag them onto the Photoshop icon. That will open them all in Photoshop. Just tried it, works fine.
Can't seem to import any kind of metadata from PM. Lightroom just import them like they've not been processes throught PM.
Make sure Lightroom isn't applying it's own metadata on import. That would overwrite anything Photo Mechanic did.
Chris Eyre-Walker nothing worked until I restarted the pc. Not sure why.
I've been trying out a few applications to cull my figure skating photos, such as spins and jumps, shot at high frame rates where you get just a few with the skaters face. In Photo Mechanic, is there a way to automatically go to the next image after setting a rating or tagging? In ON1 Photo RAW you select a rating, or like an image, and it instantly goes to the next image so you can program my ShuttlePro buttons to rate/like and do it one handed, but I can't seem to find a similar feature in Photo Mechanic. It seems like something it would have, but I can't find how to turn it on.
Hi Paul,
There is an option to auto advance when a Tag, Color Class or Rating is changed.
At the top bar go to: Photo Mechanic / Preferences / Preview (on the top left) and there you can see the option: Automatically advance to next photo when:...
And apply whatever setting you want.
Hope that helps.
Thank you! I figured it had to be somewhere! So many options!
the shitty thing about PM is it does not write to exif. only xmp sidecars which is useless when you want to upload to places like google photos. really stupid on PM not have exif writeability.
Hi Chris,
Is “Ingesting” a necessary first step? Can I use Photo Mechanic to cull and copy from the SD Card? Just plug in the card, tag the photos I want to keep with a colour, filter view by that tag and then just select all and copy straight over to my Project Folder? The reason I’d prefer to do it this way is because I don't like the idea of saving to my HD and taking up space and/or I don't want to be constantly writing to, erasing, and writing over the same partition on my HD over and over again. I just want to cull and copy straight from the SD Card.
Thanks for your help :)
It’s possible, but I’d always recommend importing off the SD card and then culling on an SSD. Because SD cards aren’t meant for a lot of reading/writing and jumping around on. It might corrupt your files and you’ll end up with losing files.
SSDs are you safest intermediate step.
baddass
can you convert RAW files to JPEG and export them to a folder on the PC not to LR?
Yes you can.
You should convert proprietary RAW files to DNG files for archiving. This way you will always be able to open the files no matter what software you're using or if the proprietary file change. You can work on the RAW if you get benefits from a software that recognize your specific camera profile, otherwise, DNG is better, even if 14 bits DNG files take more space than RAW files, it's the best way to archive your files. Then you can get JPG files for your client of course.
Awesome video mate. What if I have multiple locations on the same day and I want to have them organised by their location? Is that possible? Seems you in explanation that you have them by date. Hope that made sense haha
There's a solution for that too.
Either I import under the location/headline that I did most of my work under and then go in and move the images into a new folder that aren't in the right place. Then I open up the IPTC stationery pad, fix it and apply it to the images that need fixing.
OR
Plug in the SD card, ignore ingest window, instead, on the bottom left right-click on the card and select: Open Folder and Subfolders in new Contact Sheet. Now you can see the grid of all RAW files without importing them. Select all the ones from the first job. Right-Click and press Copy. Import with IPTC stationery pad + renaming techniques.
Both work well. I usually go with the second option. But if I can, I'll just use different memory cards for different jobs, or just try to import my work before I head on to a second job.
Awesome mate. Appreciate the response. Been tossing up PhotoMechanic for a while now.
Give it a go. They have a 30 day trial and if you sign up on the blog article you might win it 😉
Chris Eyre-Walker already subd champ 👍
Why do you need LR with photomechanic? ACR has all the Lightroom functionality to edit photos.
Lightroom is great to edit but also catalog and organised photos. Create collections, albums etc. great features if you have +160k photos in your library.
12:54 how do you get Lightroom to automatically show the updated metadata without the warning?
Not sure which warning you are talking about?
Maybe it’s a checkbox that can be selected, something like: don’t show this message again... or something like that??
Sorry, can’t help more here without more info.
@@chriseyrewalker when I do the steps you showing here on PM, and then sync the folder in LR, Lightroom displays an icon on the top right of the image, which clicking on that produces this dialog box "The metadata for this photo has been changed by both Lightroom and another application. Should Lightroom import settings from disk or overwrite disk settings with those from the catalog?". To actually display the changes made on PM to LR, I have to click on every photo "import settings on disk".
This doesn't happen in your video, where the metadata is updated instantly without any other interaction from you.
@@chriseyrewalker FYI, and for everyone else that encounters the same problem I had, the solution is as follows:
-In Lightroom, Select all the photos in the intended folder
-Go to the "Metadata" menu
-Select "Save Metadata to File"
from now on, when you change the ITPC metadata in Photo Mechanic and then synchronize the folder in Lightroom, you won't get a dialog and the changes will be applied automatically as shown in the video.
Great Tutorial Thank you :)
What if I'd already imported to LR....then wanted to try PM...how do i get them to LR once culled and work on them if they're already in there??
You can simply drag and drop the folders that contain the raw files into Photo Mechanic.
The original won’t be moved.
You can then add/change star ratings, cull and delete files.
In Lightroom all you have to do is right click the folder which you worked on in Photo Mechanic and select: Synchronise Folder. And all changes will update without losing the edits.
How does it connect to SmugMug.
Not sure. Never connected to SmugMug before...
Thanks mate, great info. I followed the steps to add the IPTC data and it seems to have worked. How can I actually see it in the file/ in lightroom once I have done this through Photo Mechanic? Many thanks - Nils -- www.safetynames.com
In the Library Module on the right panel you can find most of that info again.
Some of it is deeper down inside the XMP file and will be written to JPG’s as they are exported out of Lightroom.
Best open the JPG file in Photoshop and press: Shift + Cmd + Option + I to see the file info and you’ll find all that data has been exported and written into the JPG file ;-)
I hope i will win😊😉
fingers crossed :-)
Surflove1 Hahaha!
Aaaahh the good old times... I started out shooting a lot of surf.
Chris Eyre-Walker no shame. I still have a gamer name on some accounts, haven't touched a controller in years
You lost me about 10 seconds in. Massively complex ! 😨
Oh that’s not good :-(
I’d recommend checking out the blog post. There it’s all written down too and you can read it at your own pace.
I also recommend watching it while you’re doing an import using the trail version. Definitely worth giving it a go 😉
nice workflow, but how to pay 150$ for a software, which hasn't been updated in the last 4 years
Thanks! Photo mechanic is constantly being updated and new camera profiles are added all the time.